Hotmail rolls out email account aggregation

Today, Microsoft announced that Hotmail email account aggregation is rolling out in the US, Canada and Brazil. This is a feature that allows consumers to receive email from other POP-enabled email accounts (including Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and AOL) directly into their Windows Live Hotmail inbox. With this new feature, Windows Live Hotmail offers a one-stop place for managing email, making it easier for more than 400 million Windows Live customers worldwide to manage their multiple accounts from a single location.

stimshady
Been there, done that. Windows Mobile supports Hotmail (both native and POP3) as well as GMail (including their wierd implementation of IMAP) and pretty much any other POP3, IMAP or Exchange based mail system. In fact, with Windows Live Mobile (and its predecessor MSN Mobile) you even get push email support for Hotmail.
Now, since you don't have a Windows Mobile device you may be a little more limited. You don't say which Nokia you have but if you have a Nokia S60 series device you can get Windows Live Spaces, Messenger, Hotmail, Contacts, and Live Search support right on your phone.
Look at http://windowsliveformobile.com/en-us/nokia/default.aspx for more details you probably missed.
For other devices (like Blackberry, or iPhone or generic browser phones) you can go to the same page, select the device from the MyDevice drop down and learn what's supported for your phone.

Mike, i have a Nokia 8800 Carbon Arte which runs the S40 software. It''s not the best mobile computing platform but i love the phone! gmail allows me to run a specific app on the S40 but not sure what you suggest above is compatible with my phone.
S40 in the UK & the EU is very popular so it would be really handy to have a specific app for the device. Personally i'd use hotmail over gmail if this option was available (and fast).

"This is a feature that allows consumers to receive email from other POP-enabled email accounts (including Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and AOL) directly into their Windows Live Hotmail inbox."
Um, what?
I've had this feature for a few years now. Why is this new?
Of course, with any half-decent email account, you could always just use an auto-forwarder to your Hotmail account and use a rule to filter it into its own separate folder.

@Waethorn: Did you have a paid account? Maybe it's now open to free accounts.
One thing that I really don't like about Hotmail is that huge ad on the right side of the inbox. It's strange 'cause Yahoo! Mail has a similar ad but somehow I don't see it as hugely intrusive as the one in Hotmail. I'd say the only way to access Hotmail (or @live.com) is through an email client like WLM.

gorath,
In the U.S., Yahoo Mail isn't available for pop capable client use. That features is only available for paid account users. This has been a long standing complaint of U.S. Yahoo Mail customers. Most of the rest of the world gets free POP client use, while America gets shut out. Pretty dumb in my opinion.

Unfortunately with a Blackberry Microsoft has no offering to sync Windows Live Calendar with the native Blackberry Calendar. Google has Sync which works perfect.
Very disappointed with Microsoft on this.

MS is slowly make their Live services very competitive. I don't use the Gmail calendar I prefer the Live Mail calendar it makes for a nice quick look and email reminders when I want them.
I want a Live phone, less business oriented with a nice browser and Zune integration built in. Is that to much to ask for?

I love Windows Live mail and use it as my primary mailbox, but I am becoming increasingly unhappy about Microsoft's refusal to support any communication protocol other than POP. It locks in to specific configurations. If it would support IMAP on both this feature and on the mailbox itself, I could use a single integrated solution for each of the following: my Windows box's client, my Linux boxes' clients, my phone, my webmail. As it stands, I have to use either webmail or the half-ass IMAP-like system that is the Mozilla Thunderbird application on my Linux box, and have no integration at all for webmail (if I use this system with POP, it will screw up the syncage on my other accounts). I can't help but feel that Microsoft is deliberately letting IMAP slide in order to prevent elegant sync with clients they haven't specifically authorized.

How many features does Hotmail have compared to Gmail? It's like a 1:100 ratio. Gmail settings and Labs let you totally customize everything, so many aspects. I Hotmail team if you're listening, I could do with IMAP, higher attachment size, and free forwarding to third party accounts please as a minimum. Hotmail is stuck in the 90s.

Ocean, you're right, that link isn't a third party standalone app, it appears it just goes through to hotmail via the mobile browser.
the beauty with the google third party app is that it DOESNT need the browser, hence once thing less to load = faster.
the whole app is designed to suck in the gmail service so it works really, really well. and you can obviously tie in other accounts to the gmail service (as per hotmail are now doing) which means i get all my mail on my phone via one app (apart from my hotmail - not sure i can tie hotmail into gmail?)
this is obviously just referring to the S40 platform on the nokia and not other platforms like Windows Mobile etc.

robertsgay, what's the difference in being taken seriously between hotmail and gmail? not a lot i think.
if you want to be taken seriously you have a corporate account, for example @microsoft.com, or, especially for you, @apple.com.

@shitshady: it's like having an AOL email account. Not, if you have a hotmail account and use it for anything other than IM-ing with friends, then you're not to be taken seriously. And yes, it also is a bad name. Hot-male. Not good.

@gay: they're all the same, gmail, hotmail, yahoo, aol, it's all 'consumer' stuff... no professional person would consider using a web-based account as their main email service...why? - because it doesn't look professional (and therefore not serious).

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